Tom Hardy and Shia LaBeouf team for 'The Wettest County in the World': Hooray for bootlegging!

Image Credit: Steve Granitz/WireImage.comBoardwalk Empire just polished off its first luscious season of illegal boozin’, and it looks like the HBO series might be kickstarting a legit pop culture trend. According to the L.A. Times, embryonic megastar Tom Hardy will be co-starring with Shia LaBeouf in The Wettest County in the World, based on Matt Bondurant’s novel about a family of bootleggers in Prohibition-era Virginia. The film will be directed by John Hillcoat from a screenplay by musician Nick Cave, the same team who gave us the blood-soaked Aussie western The Proposition. (Hillcoat also directed The Road.) The movie is currently slated to start shooting in the spring. Does this indicate a new alcohol-as-contraband trend in Hollywood? Are bootleggers the new vampires?

Short answer: Probably not. But given the ratings success of Boardwalk Empire, I do wonder if we’re going to see more films and TV shows set around the go-go Roaring ’20s and their depressing sequel, the Murmuring ’30s. A story like Wettest County feels surprisingly topical – we’re in the midst of another financial crisis, and the country is currently struggling with the legality of a different leisure substance. PopWatchers, would you like to see more bootlegging-based entertainment? And who do you think will wear old-timey clothes better: Hardy or LaBeouf?